A little bit, but it helps to illustrate the situations we have now - Annotation is an afterthought for the vendors.

I can also "synchronize" the annotations between ADE and Mantano (Android), but it's not as seamless as I would like. It works, but with quirks that scream "immature technology". And as you're aware, drawing/freehand is not supported.

Although I don't like being locked to a single vendor, Amazon's Whispersync at least handles textual annotations quite well. Of course, getting it done within the same company (or team) is usually easier than getting it done between many companies.

That's why we need a standardized way that's well-thought and more generally accepted, be it (preferably) a defined, or de facto standard. The Adobe format is a good start but it's lacking in many aspects, and while it's supported on some platforms it's (IMO) far from being a "generally accepted" one.

BTW, they also told me their proposed standard is free and open for any vendor to use. But I'm not sure if any vendor besides themselves is going to implement it anytime soon, understanding that it may not be the final standard used by EPUB, and as long as annotation is considered an afterthought by the vendor (which, BTW, is possibly the direct result of lack of user request, and I don't understand why people don't ask for it more...)

What's the current status of this? Which devices/formats do allow for syncing annotations with a PC? Thanks

kindlecomes close, if you also use kindle for PC, but only if you bought the book(s) from amazon AFAIK

When you make highlights, bookmarks, and notes on your Kindle (this is also includes the mobile Kindle app) your annotations are automatically synced back to your Kindle account. Amazon aptly calls this service, “Read.Review.Remember“.

Actually, syncing annotaded PDF is the solution I use, testing ezPDF Reder and RepliGo Reader (the latter seems to me a bit better).

The syncing takes place with Dropbox, via Dropsync

The issue there is how to keep the Calibre dir structure - that is how to export the library to the device the first time, in order not to lose all the metadata. Once the library is exported, with all the information, any change in the pdf files as such will be reflected either side when sync is performed

Using that to save the location of an annotation makes it easy to always have the correct location even if the book is loaded onto a different reader that flows text differently (screen reader size, font change, whatever).

Combine the above with an XML wrapper to hold the text of the annotation, or the location of the image, and it should be doable, no? Having people agree to what the XML wrapper should be would be another story...